


Husband and Wife

by afterandalasia



Category: Mulan (1998)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, Community: kink_bingo, Crossdressing, Established Relationship, Flash Fic, Genderplay, Genderqueer Character, Other, Vulnerability, Wordcount: 500-1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-13 20:33:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterandalasia/pseuds/afterandalasia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There aren't words for them, not yet. But Mulan likes it nonetheless, when she looks into the mirror and see how perfect they are like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Husband and Wife

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the kink_bingo square "Crossdressing" and a disney_kink prompt (since deleted) asking for crossdressing Shang.

There aren’t words for what they are. Not yet, at least, though sometimes Mulan thinks that one day the world might be able to find words for them.

She stands, Ping and Mulan together, and runs her hands through Shang’s hair. It is barely any shorter than hers is, and it certainly doesn’t take any effort to find a style that will disguise its length. Shining with oil, with a jade flower pin, it is striking.

It is a good thing that Shang does not expect to be able to dress as a woman as if it were a disguise. His shoulders are too broad, muscles too defined, chin too strong; even Mulan sometimes receives a second glance from people, as if they are checking their first assumption. She finds more and more that she likes the feeling.

Her dress looks strange on him, but it feels perfect, even to her. She smoothes the silk with her hands, following the shapes of his muscles: taut triceps, hard biceps, moving up to the defined lines of his shoulders. The skirt which forms a train on her just brushes the ground on him as he sits, watching in the mirror with that wary, awed trepidation she has come to love on his features.

Her fingers tease at his collar, drawing it down just slightly to expose his collarbone, and she runs her hand across it. She can feel the way that Shang tenses; for a soldier, it is nothing to remove his shirt, but clothed in this dress he can feel the exposure created from just an inch or two of skin.

Mulan remembers the way that it first felt to put on her father’s armour. It had felt wrong not because it was a man’s, but because it was her father’s, as if she had not yet earnt the right to wear it. After so long in the trappings of a woman, in dresses and make-up, it had felt like a relief. Now, the clothes of a man sometimes felt better; sometimes, those of a woman did; most often, she prefers her neutral hanfu and lets people draw their own conclusions on how to address her.

It is not the same for Shang, she knows. Only with her does he ever want to wear these clothes, sit at this mirror and watch as husband and wife blur together, feel an echo of what she feels. Mulan kisses his bare neck, runs one hand down the unprotected line of his spine, and hears him gasp at the contact. Beneath armour he is impenetrable, stern, like a sword in its scabbard, but here she can feel every rise and fall of his skin, its warmth, the way that it gives beneath her fingers.

It makes her feel bound to him, so close that they might as well be one spirit split into two bodies at times, for all that they fight at others. In many ways they are the same, and sometimes Mulan has the strangest sense that they are both almost out of their time, that one day there will be words for what she feels when she stands behind him, as he raises the brush of red paint towards his lips and pauses in consideration. He is perfect, wonderful beneath her hands, and she feels perfect in his eyes just for this instant when they break all of the rules.


End file.
